When we wanted to depart from LFMV Avignon I had to wait about 30 minutes to pay the landing and parking fee (about 30+ EUR). The people from operations had to take care of a departing commercial flight.
Now I read in another thread that people get sent invoices from French airports. Does that mean one can simply depart without talking to anyone and they figure out where to send the invoice to? Or maybe leave an address after landing?
I got sent an invoice from Lyon despite having paid :D
Does that mean one can simply depart without talking to anyone and they figure out where to send the invoice to? Or maybe leave an address after landing?
No, it means that some French airports aren’t set up to take landing fees from GA, and instead will send you an invoice. But if they are set up for taking landing fees, they expect you to pay them before departure.
As suggested, it depends on the aérodrome.
Personally, if it’s towered I don’t bother and it usually shows up in the mail.
If it’s un-towered and run by the aéro-club I usually pay them a visit before leaving.
That said OVER HALF OF AERODROMES IN FRANCE ARE FREE !!!
I think all can potentially take money from you but clearly some are not very interested. Often a symptom of a “state owned” company. Some can do it only Mon-Fri and 9-5 or so (Bergerac, maybe Cannes). Some are often out of the staff that can work the CC machine (Pontoise). Many have the fuel man do it and he is off at lunch for ~2hrs (La Rochelle, Dinard, etc, etc).
So you just depart and “somehow” they find the address for the invoice. That can take a year. How exactly they do that is a good Q. I once explained to an accounts lady at some UK airport how to use google to track down N-regs, rather than sending the invoice to the US trustee found on faa.gov which is really annoying.
At Dinard I filled in a form (the fuel man was “away”) with my address and it still took a year.
ALWAYS keep your flight records for a year at least, in case you paid it and a year later you get an invoice.
I often just send airport OPS an e-mail with the reg, time of arrival and departure, and ask them to send me the invoice by e-mail. Since I currently rent, I sometimes receive a bill that should have been paid from someone else. The airports keep records of billing addresses for the regs.
